To an outsider, India looks monolithic. It is anything but. Indian is such a varied land that it is more useful to think of it as being like Europe than like a China. The people from the northeast look different than, eat different food than, speak a different language than, and generally are different than the people in south India. Someone in Srinigar in the north couldn't be more different than a northeasterner or a southerner. And within these three main regional categories, there are subtleties, dialects, religious nuances, different faiths, different castes. It is a vastly diverse country.
One state that is really different than any other states, perhaps with the one exception of its cousin Tamil Nadu, is Kerala. I have been there twice and the family has been there once - on the recent trip.
The food is fragrant and coconut flavoured. The countryside is green. The people are warm and friendly. And there is a unique set of dancing styles that are from Kerala specifically. One of the best known is kathakali, I have written about this many times. But we attended a show where various other styles were executed. I have not memorized the names, but I can assure you that they are beautiful, shocking, alluring and a variety of other things. Above are pictures of these dances.
You'll notice the picture at the top - it is of the full hour that we watch make up applied to the faces of the main kathakali dancers. The kids really enjoyed that.
There are a couple of videos, as well. One shows a dance between Kali and Krishna (Krishna is the guy in kathakali with the green face - always). The second is of the various facial expressions from one of the main characters of the dance we saw. It is a woman - although played by a man. Kathakali has the prohibition on women taking part that characterized Shakespeare's plays early on.
